


A Mirror Cold and Darkly

by thirteenblackbirds



Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:09:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1735652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirteenblackbirds/pseuds/thirteenblackbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Children are disappearing near a town in Norway and their lights are disappearing off the map - off the Globe itself. </p><p>When Jack Frost volunteers to investigate, the last thing he expects to feel in this land of long winters is a discomfort with the ice and snow.  Where are the children?  Why can't the Globe find them?  And why does no one in the town seem concerned?</p><p>Not technically AU, but set in modern times (assuming that Frozen is in the same historical timeline as RoTG).  A darker redux of The Snow Queen tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes Jack really wishes that North would use another means of summoning them, because as soon as Jamie’s eyes light up and he grins out an exuberant “Cool!”, Jack knows by the light reflected there that he has to go.  Like, right now.  

Laying the perfectly sculpted ice block he created two seconds ago onto the igloo that was just starting to take shape, Jack sighs, reaches out to ruffle Jamie’s hair, and hops into a waiting wind stream.  “Gotta run, kid, see you later!”  As an apology, a new batch of ice blocks shape and harden out of the snow, ready to be lifted into place and Jack quietly instructs a small puff of wind to stay behind to assist the boy in said lifting.

Pretty much used to this by now, Jamie waves him off enthusiastically but briefly as he immediately returns his attention to ice blocks and his half-finished ice fort, the tip of his tongue sticking out in concentration.

Jack shakes his head in mock-indignation, ruffles Jamie’s hair again with the help of the wind (more roughly this, eliciting a small yelp of protest), and flies off due north toward the ribbons of light.

 *

“What’s the emergency?” 

“Jack, you are here!”  North’s booming voice still took some getting used to.  (Jack asked him once about his inside voice and nearly had his eardrums blown out by a belly-deep roar of laughter and a bellowed, “This _is_ inside voice, Jack!  Have to talk much more loudly outside so reindeers can hear!”)

“About time.  Still running last, mate.”  Which is entirely unfair of Bunnymund to point out _every damn time_ since, unlike him and his connect-everywhere Warrens or Toothiana’s freakishly fast fairy wings or Sandy’s ability to pretty much _teleport_ , Jack only has the wind to carry him and there is a limit to how fast he can go without causing a freak windstorm over some poor city or town.

“Yeah, yeah, well some of us have friends to hang out with instead of holing up in an underground tunnel all year with walking eggs.”

“Oi!  What was that?  Unlike you, some of _us_ have an actual job that needs doin’!”  This is a familiar refrain by now, however, and, though annoyed, Bunnymund’s retort holds no real bite.

“Now, now, boys,” Toothiana soothes, “let’s all try to get along, please?”  Beside her, Sandy mimes a waving hand in greeting and nods his agreement.

Jack takes the opportunity to smirk briefly in Bunnymund’s direction – he’s learned that refusing to engage with the Pooka often irritates him more than words ever could – before turning again to North.  “So.  What’s the emergency?” he repeats, lightly enough, but the tension in the room shifts as the other Guardians all turn toward the Guardian of Wonder.  Whose eyes are suddenly serious. 

“It is the children,” he begins slowly, almost hesitantly.  Before he can elaborate, three voices interrupt as one.

“Is it –”

“It can’t be—”

“ _Pitch_?” 

Even Sandy has three large question marks out.  Golden sands swirl in distressed eddies around him.

North holds up his hands in response.  “I don’t know,” he admits.  “It is not like last time.  It doesn’t _feel_ like Pitch.”  He pats his belly absently as if to confirm the accuracy of this intuition.

Unsurprisingly, this fails to reassure his fellow Guardians, but before they can start in again, North shakes his head and gestures up at the Globe.  Happily, it is awash in lights – little pinpricks of dreams, hope, wonder, memories, fun, _belief_. 

“Can’t see anythin’ wrong with it,” Bunnymund grunts after a beat of silence.  “Seems apples to me.”

“Problem is not with all of Globe,” North says, then points at a northern corner of Europe.  “Is here.  Yeti noticed last night.”  He pauses to look at each of them, big eyes grim.  “Lights are disappearing from Norway.”

“Norway?”  Toothiana looks puzzled.  “We were just out there last night – well, we’re everywhere every night – but no one mentioned anything strange.  What would cause just the children in Norway to start disbelieving?  Easter went off without a hitch –” She looks to Bunnymund for confirmation, who gives her a vaguely insulted look back but nods to her statement.  She gives him a small shrug of apology and turns back to the Globe, flitting up to peer more closely at the country in question.  “Could it be a malfunction?”

It is North’s turn to look scandalized.  “Globe does not malfunction,” he booms.  “Globe is always correct.  Something is wrong in Norway.”  Beside him, one of the yetis gestures and rumbles out what sounds like an addendum.  “Marvin says lights _disappeared_ , not go out like when Pitch came back.”

“Disappeared,” Jack echoes.  “Disappeared how?”

North looks hesitant again.  “We think … children are disappearing in Norway.  Not disbelieving, but gone.”

“Gone, like kidnapped?” Toothiana gasps.  “But … hold on.  Hold on.”  She closes her eyes in concentration, reaching out to her European Division, checking her mental ledgers.  “Two lateral incisors weren’t collected last night in Sogn og Fjordane and before that… twelve these past two weeks!”  A feather molts in her distress.  “How could I have not noticed?  Oh no, oh no, oh no.”  The five Baby Teeth accompanying her also begin to chirp anxiously.

“Hey, hey, let’s all calm down.  Let’s think about this.”  Jack isn’t feeling especially calm himself, but if the ordeal with Pitch the previous year taught him anything, it is that panic and high emotions are not very useful in times of crisis. 

“He’s right, love,” Bunnymund says, all mock-grudges set aside now in the face of a potential threat to children anywhere.  “What do we know?  Has He – Has the Moon said anything about this?”

North shakes his head, beard swaying.  “He has not.  I ask him when waiting for you all, but He does not respond.”

All five Guardians descend into silence, each lost in their own thoughts as to what the disappearing lights may mean.  The Globe is a real-time catalogue of every single child in the world and their faith in the Guardians.  While its lights could dim due to a loss of that faith, as all five of them learned painfully a little over a year ago, outright disappearance was something new – and alarming.

“Well, there’s no point sitting here waiting for the Moon to get back to us,” Jack says suddenly, breaking into the heavy silence.  “Tooth, you mentioned a place earlier – can you tell if the missing children are all from around that area?”

“I think so, but let me confirm.”

“What are you thinking of, Jack?”

It is Sandy who replies, by way of a more specific question: his sands form a silhouette of Jack, an arrow to a rough map of Norway, and then a magnifying glass, ending with a question mark.

Jack nods at both him and North.  “Yeah, I’ll go take a look there.  You’re all busy with your own stuff and I’m just hanging around.  The kids will just have to do without snow days for a little bit.”

“Could be dangerous by yourself, Frosty.”

Jack grins at the embodiment of Easter.  “Aww, you _do_ care.”

“Shove off,” Bunnymund grumbles.

“Thanks for the concern, but I’ll be fine.  I’ll call you guys if I need backup, but if the Moon isn’t too worried about this, it’s probably not a big deal, am I right?  I’ll go check it out.  It’s better than all of us standing around here, staring up at the Globe and hoping for an answer.”

“Aster is right, Jack, it could be dangerous,” Toothiana says, landing down beside him.

“I’ll be careful.  Hey, come on, I’ll be fine!  Don’t you guys trust me?”

He’s met with a round of skepticism ranging from slight (North and Sandy) to decidedly pointed (Bunnymund).  Luckily, he’s saved from addressing this appalling lack of confidence in him when Toothiana’s head snaps up and tilts as though listening intently. 

“Fourteen so far in the Sogn county, but nine of those are in the southeast, by Aurland.”  Her fingers twist in concern.  “That’s not good at all – Aurland has a population of less than 2000.  For there to be nine missing… Oh, how could I have not noticed earlier?  Sometimes the children forget to put out their teeth right away, so we have to schedule later pick-ups, but I’ve never had something this concentrated.  This is terrible!”  She buries her face in her hands, her wings and shoulders dropping with guilt and anguish.

Jack reaches to pat her shoulder, sharing a glance with the others.  Bunnymund lays a paw comfortingly on her other shoulder, and North and Sandy both shift closer.  “I’ll find out what’s going on,” Jack says, uncharacteristically quietly.  He looks back at the Globe, finds Norway, trying to will the lights to tell him what’s wrong and how he can help.  He doesn’t say this to the others, but he has the strange feeling that this is something that he should investigate alone – for now, at least.

“I should get going.  I’ll call for help if I need it,” he promises again. 

“Take snowglobe,” North says, pressing the object into his hand.  “Just in case.”

“Hooroo, mate.  G’luck.”

Sandy gives him an encouraging smile and a thumbs up – it was nice to see that someone has some faith in him, Jack thinks, smiling back.  The Guardian of Dreams blows a small handful of sand his way, signaling above his head that this will allow Jack to see into dreams for a short while (well, either that or he would be hallucinating about unicorns and dinosaurs and flying manta rays in the near future).  Jack mouths a thank you, knowing that this is not a gift given lightly. 

“Be careful, Jack,” Toothiana says, lifting her head to look at him.

“Yeah, I will,” Jack promises.  “Don’t worry about me and don’t let this get to you guys – the children need you all to do your jobs.”

“They need you too, Jack.”

“I know, North, that’s why I’m going to see if I can help with this lights disappearing business.  It might not be Pitch again, but whatever it is, I can’t have it on my watch as a Guardian, can I?  Alright, I’m off.  Catch you guys later!”  And with that, he calls the wind to him, flipping into the air and away, racing toward a country in Northwestern Europe where children have been disappearing, taking their lights with them.

*

He makes it to Norway in a few hours, mouthing a silent apology along the way to the northern tip of Finland for the unusually heavy winds and waves resulting from his speed.  He also devotes a few seconds to making sure that they have excellent snow for skiing and snowball fights as part of his apology and because, hey, his center _is_ Fun after all.

In the early hours of dawn, Jack finds himself hovering over the tiny villages of Aurland.  It is a beautiful, picturesque place, framed by mountains and glaciers and fjords.  It does not look like a place that has seen nine of its children disappear in just two weeks.  There is no miasma of unease or tension emanating from the inhabitants in their sleep and, taking advantage of Sandy’s gift, Jack takes a quick glance into the children’s dreams and finds no fear.

That’s all very unusual for anywhere with a recent history of disappearing children and especially so for such a small place with a tiny population.

There is something else, however.  Not fear, but a certain … cold.  A lack of feeling.  Like ice over a river, thick enough to skate on, keeping the water trapped beneath.  Maybe what he needs isn’t Sandy’s gift at all.  Maybe…

Jack dives down toward a house where he can feel more than see the glowing light marking the presence of a child who believed in them – in _him_.  He lands on the floor softly, careful not to wake her.  A thin layer of ice forms around his bare feet but evaporates as soon as he takes a step forward. 

She’s about six or seven, he guesses, with platinum blond hair and a slightly upturned button nose.  Nothing out of the ordinary about her appearance, though her body temperature registers a little lower than average.  The sensation of cold and ice is still there, faintly, and it is disorientingly unfamiliar – Jack has never ( _never_ ) associated ice or snow with a feeling of unfamiliarity.  This ice, this coolness, however, did not belong to him (again, an entirely and quite unhappily strange feeling).

Leaving the little girl, he hops on the wind to the next house over and the sensation of ice is stronger, heavier.  There, he finds no child, but an empty room with a child-sized bed and some handcarved wooden figurines that look to be toys.  There is a small train beside a bear, lying on its side, by the headboard. 

There is frost along the edges of the room.

Jack experiences something he has not experienced in centuries – he shivers.  Not from the cold, but from how alien it feels to him, here in this dark, empty, cold room.  He knows immediately that this is one of the children whose light has disappeared and he also knows, his grip tightening on his staff, that this is no ordinary kidnapping.  No, this is something else and he needs to know what.  Needs to find out, as quickly as possible.

He heads across the hall to the other bedroom, where two adults sleep.  Their expressions are calm ( _cool_ ) and do not show signs of parents who have recently lost their child.

It is the first time since his making that Jack Frost has felt discomfort with the cold and he is not happy about the feeling at all.

*

He waits until the sun rises and calls the people from their beds.  He passes the time by doing a short flyover the area, looking for anything out of the ordinary.  Unable to find anything concrete, Jack returns to the village to find the day started and people about their daily lives.  Awake, he gets the same feeling from them – a faint numbness, ice over water.

Around noon, he feels something different: a quick piercing pain, like a papercut or a needle prick.  He spins sharply in the air, trying to pinpoint the source.  It has to do with ice, he knows this, would not have felt it otherwise.  But this is not ice he can see or touch or create – this ice is lodged somewhere else and he doesn’t know how to affect it.  Yet.

His eyes scan the houses and roads carefully, squinting a little in the sunlight reflecting off snow and water.  He’s close, he can feel it… if only he can find where the pain originated, he thinks he’ll have a starting point for understanding these mysterious disappearances.

There!  A young boy, around ten, is standing by the edge of a tree-lined road, looking beyond it at something Jack can’t see from his vantage point.  Calling the wind urgently, Jack leaps toward the boy just as he leaves the road and starts into the woods.  No one else seems to notice as they both disappear into the trees.

*

The boy is heading toward the mountain by one of the nearby fjords – Toothiana would have known its name, but Jack doesn’t and he has more important things to concentrate on right now.  He’s tried calling out to the boy, hoping that he would be able to see him, but so far he hasn’t had any luck.  The boy had turned at Jack’s first “Hello!”, seemingly registering the sound of his voice, but he had barely even glanced in the Guardian’s general direction before continuing to walk toward wherever it is he is going.

“Hey, buddy, hey, I know you can hear me.”  Jack is nothing if not persistent.  “Where’re ya going?  There’s really nothing this way, you know, except trees and that really big mountain.”  He is met with the steady crunch of snow under the boy’s boots.

“Aren’t you hungry?  And cold?  I mean, you’re wearing boots and a jacket, which is good, but it’s pretty cold out here and take it from me, I’m an expert on cold.  Although I guess I’m not dressed all that warmly myself, what with the bare feet and all, but I’m Jack Frost, y’know.  I pretty much _am_ Winter.  Cold doesn’t really bother me, but you?  You’re like, ten, _maybe_ and I know that you’re going to start getting cold soon if you aren’t freezing your toes off already.”

Crunch, crunch, crunch. 

This isn’t getting him anywhere, but Jack can’t stop himself from talking to the kid.  He kind of reminds Jack of Jamie, with his light auburn hair, which is apparently a rarity among the predominantly white-blond heads of the other Aurlanders.  Right now, though, right now he has to concentrate on breaking through to the boy, because it is the beginning of the winter months and the sun has already started to set and if it was cold earlier, it’s going to be freezing soon. 

In the twilight of the forest, with large looming shadows and the barely-visible glint of sunset on the fjord, Jack is just beginning to seriously entertain the idea of kidnapping the boy back to the village when he suddenly feels a third presence with them and he raises his staff instinctively. 

“We’ve got company,” he mutters, senses heightened and the wind rising in gusts around him. 

“Who’s there?” he calls into the coming darkness.  There is an uneasy weight in the pit of his stomach reminding him of the confrontation with Pitch.  This isn’t the Bogeyman that he faces though, here in a small corner of the world.  This is something new, different, rooted in some way to the land and its stories – a local entity (a local evil?) unlike the ubiquity of fear and darkness that Pitch represented.

There is a sudden harsh light (like a glare from a mirror catching light and throwing it back with force) from which he has to shield his eyes, one arm thrown up to his face, and through it, there is an image of a stretched grotesque snarling face, all jagged angles and jeering malevolence.  Blindly, he throws ices and frost forward, and tries to keep himself between the boy and whatever it is behind that glaring light.

His ice makes contact with _something_ with a small clink _._ Jack knows he hasn’t hit anything square on, probably only grazed some surface, and he levels his staff in front of him, preparing for another attack.  As it turns out, he is wrong about the damage he’s done or the damage his assailant is willing to risk: the next thing he hears is a surprised, angry noise ( _a hundred nails screeching down blackboard_ ) and then the light is gone as abruptly as it appeared. 

Blinking hard, Jack is just barely able to hear a woman’s voice saying, “Kai!”  He feels a shift in the wind and when he is able to see clearly again, he is alone in the woods at the foot of the mountain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed Frozen, but at the same time, there was _so much_ from the original Snow Queen story that had incredible potential and I wanted to take all that inspiration out for a drive. And, of course, how could I resist throwing Jack Frost in there? I'm planning this for three chapters - this was supposed to be a relatively short, fast-paced story, but I am a notorious rambler so I guess we'll see how that goes. 
> 
> Next chapter, we finally meet Elsa. And Jack gets some answers and a truckload of new questions. It'll be good for him... probably.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Jack discovers that finding the children and getting them back home safely are two different things, and his life gets a little more complicated.

_How did that happen?_   The boy – was his name Kai? – had been standing less than three feet away from him and now he’s gone.

Jack immediately leaps up, urging the wind to take him higher until he has a bird’s eye view of the forest as it sweeps up the mountain and toward the sea.  He can see the lights of the town they’d left behind earlier that day but he cannot find the boy, cannot see anything moving below him in the forest.  Dropping back down, he tries to regain his calm.  _Think, Jack_.  There aren’t any footprints; the snow around the area where the light had appeared and he’d lost the boy is pristine, save for a few minute animal tracks. 

There had been another person there with them in the second before the boy disappeared or was taken.  The woman whose voice Jack remembers calling out “Kai”.  Is she responsible for the missing children?  At this point, it is the most likely theory he has.

“Argh!”  He lets out a shout of frustration as he stands there, alone in the snowy moonlit woods.  Now he’s taking this personally.  Of course, he was serious about the mission before – he is a Guardian and any danger to children anywhere is of personal concern to him.  But this – this unsettling feeling of foreignness with ice and snow, which had been his – _his_ – for all those long centuries when he had nothing else.  This taking of a child right from under his nose. 

“Oh, it’s _on_.”  Jack focuses on sharpening his frustration into a core of driving determination.  There’s no use feeling sorry for or angry at himself, unless he can use it to solve whatever was happening here.  Holding that thought close, he flies back toward the village – he needs to confirm something about his power and the other power at work in that place.

*

Back in the town, Jack finds the first girl he saw the night before, sitting on the floor of her bedroom, head tilted solemnly at a book of what looked to be fairy tales.  He lands into a crouch in front of her slowly, careful not to startle her given that she should be able to see him.

“Hey, hello,” he says softly. 

She looks up at the sound of his voice and he can see that her eyes are slightly glazed.  _Ice over water_.  Though she looks straight at him, Jack finds it hard to tell whether or not she actually sees him.

Holding out his hand, palm up, he shapes a small ice otter and sends it swimming around her.  She tracks it with her eyes but other than that, he gets no reaction.  Okay, so she _can_ see it.  Jack’s pretty sure that means her lack of reaction is either because a) she’s somehow immune to his charm and the charm of his incredibly adorable ice creations ( _highly unlikely_ ), or b) the frostiness he’s sensed around her and the other people in town is somehow muting their senses and reactions. 

 _Well_ , he thinks, flicking a finger at his otter, _fight fire with fire and ice with ice_.  The otter flips and lands on the bridge of the girl’s nose, dissolving into ice crystals.  There is long moment when Jack is not sure whether it works or not.  Then, he feels, through whatever connection he retains to the power he’s just worked, something like a splinter or glass shard crack and dissolve.  The girl’s gaze sharpens and now there is awe that fills her eyes as she looks at him.

“Jokul Frosti.”  Her voice is a hushed whisper, her eyes huge.

Jack doesn’t know a word of Norsk, but he would recognize his own name in any language and to hear a child speak it still fills him with a burst of fierce joy and pride.  With a swirl of his hand, he sends another two otters leaping toward her and this time, her delighted laughter rings in the room, drawing a chuckle from him as well.

“Hi,” he tries again and holds out his empty hand.  “Don’t be scared, I’m going to help you.”

She blinks uncomprehendingly up at him, but there is no fear in her eyes, so he takes one of her hands gently.  He breathes a small sigh of relief when she smiles and grips his hand readily, saying something happily in Norsk. 

“Whoa, slow down,” he laughs.  “I really gotta start taking Toothiana up on her offer for language lessons.”  He gestures to himself with his staff.  “Jack.”

“Jokul,” she says.

“Ok, close enough,” he allows.  Then he points at her.  “What’s your name?”

Even if she didn’t understand his words, the gesture appears to be one that she is familiar with as she beams at him.  “Gerd!”  She pulls her hand away in order to hold up six fingers with both hands.  “Eg er seks år gamal.”  Gerd has clearly been trained to answer offer the information as a package deal.

“You’re six years old,” he guesses.  “Uh, I’m… oh man, I don’t have enough fingers for it, how depressing.  Never mind.  Here’s a snow kitten instead.”  A pause as they both relish the sight of the kitten batting at a tiny snowball.  “May I?”  He holds out his hand for hers again and is gratified when she reaches out to him without hesitation.  “Thank you.” 

Gripping her hand lightly, he tries to discern any remaining traces of that strange coldness he felt earlier.  He’s pleased to find nothing of the sort and he is just about to release her hand when he is hit with a vivid image of a woman with white-blond hair and a fond smile dressed in a shimmering ice-blue gown.  An ice crystal flares between him and Gerd, then breaks and falls as a light dusting of snow. 

Gerd giggles again, no doubt believing that this was an extravagant show put on solely for her.  Jack knows better.  He squeezes her hand once, then releases it.  “I have to leave now, but I’ll be back to check on you, and everyone else, ok?”  He stands up, feels the wind already waiting outside the window.

Gerd stands with him and, even without the frost, she is a remarkably self-composed child.  She seems to sense some of his urgency and merely presses one tiny hand into his knee, giving him a small smile.  “Snedronningen.”

 _The Snow Queen_. 

Jack hears the voice, achingly familiar despite having only ever heard it a handful of times before – most memorably, on that day he woke gasping from the bottom of that frozen lake – and he jumps backward into the wind almost immediately, pausing only to shout a quick good-bye to Gerd. 

Finally, finally the Moon is talking, has made it known that He is paying attention to this.

“About time you showed up!”

*

At the precise moment the ice crystal flares and disintegrates in Gerd’s room, a woman, white blond and dressed in a glittering icy gown, looks up sharply, something close to fear reflected in her startling blue eyes.  She gathers an auburn-haired boy close to her and presses a light kiss to his temple. 

“I’ll keep you safe,” she tells him and the rest of the dozen plus children gathered in the room.  “All of you.” 

The moon shines brightly through the window, making the ice of the walls shine like crystals.

*

He makes a straight line for the mountain this time, some instinct deep in his gut telling him that there is something he overlooked there last time.  (Perhaps there is something to North’s unceasing faith in his belly, after all.) The journey is a mad rush, as his travels with the wind always are, but it lacks much of its usual carefreeness. 

 _The Snow Queen_ , the Moon had said.  Or, more accurately, translated for him.  Why did Gerd tell him that name?  Is the Snow Queen, whoever she is, behind the missing children?  Is she the woman he heard in the forest right before the boy disappeared?  If Gerd knows her name, she must be part of the local stories, but that speculation by itself tells Jack very little about whether she was the hero or the villain of those stories.  He knows there are other spirits who inhabit the world aside from the Guardians – he was one of them for over 300 years, after all.  Most of the spirits he’s come across have been relatively benign, but they are all free agents without any particular alignment or loyalty, which means there is always the potential for mischief or, worse, malevolence.

“Can’t you tell me anymore?”  It’s more a gripe than a true question, however, so he is not surprised when he is met with silence.  “Fine, fine, I get it.  I’ll handle it myself.”  If the Moon hadn’t deemed it necessary to intervene with Pitch, it is even less likely that He would actively get involved in a localized incident like this one.

He shoots up the mountainside like a comet in reverse, whipping up a cloud of snow behind him.  So far, nothing seems out of the ordinary.  And it doesn’t help that he hasn’t more than the faintest clue of what he is supposed to be looking for.  _A Queen.  Ok.  If that title isn’t just for show, then she probably has some of castle or palace, right?  How hard can it be to find a_ castle _?  Aren’t those things usually supposed to be pretty big?_  

Not for the first time, Jack wishes he knew more about the legends of the country he’s in.  Or that he had at least brought Baby Tooth along.  Well, maybe it’s for the best that she hadn’t come with him – she would probably have been freezing this entire time.

Freezing… maybe that was the answer.  There are two things Jack knows for certain at this point in time.  One is that he has, before coming to Aurland, always felt entirely at home with cold and ice in all of its incarnations.  The second thing is that today and last night, he experienced, for the first time ever since his resurrection as Jack Frost, an ice that was created from power not his own.  If that is the case and if that power is indeed resident on this mountain…

Swooping up and down the side of the mountain, he scrutinizes the ground below, searching for anything that may be out of the ordinary.  It’s like one of those “spot the difference” games and if there is one thing Jack prides himself on being good at, it’s games. 

He is almost at the mountaintop when he swerves around an outcrop and finds himself in a shadowed plateau that is half-hidden behind the jutting rocks.  A tingling on his skin makes him abruptly aware that he is actually feeling _cold_.  Jack pulls up sharply, arms outstretched as he balances on the wind.

Preoccupied with trying to figure out the magic of the space he’s found himself in, Jack doesn’t notice right away that the Moon’s light is glowing brighter.  He _does_ take notice, however, when the light moves across the rock and snow and slowly reveals, where it touches, a tall gleaming edifice of ice that tapers upwards into a single piercing spire. 

“That was definitely not there before,” Jack mutters to himself.  He can’t help but be impressed by what he sees – he’s certainly never attempted to create something like that, although he’s sure that he _could if he tried_ (right?).  Resolving to explore this possibility later (maybe North would appreciate a new wing at the Pole?), Jack sets it aside for now and flies straight toward the castle of ice.

As Jack gets closer, he can make out figures in one of the upper-level rooms: small figures, sitting or kneeling on the floor – too small to be adults or even teenagers.   _Children_.  All frivolity chased away, he grimly sends the wind ahead to clear his path.

*

She has been alone for a very long time now, left behind for reasons she still cannot understand, untouched by the time that eventually took away all her loved ones and saw her kingdom vanish into history.  In the end, she had also let Olaf go, understanding that the snowman’s spirit had half-followed Anna into that final darkness and that although he continued to exist, he had stopped being _alive_.  Unlike the first time she fled to this castle, however, she does not relinquish all of her responsibilities.  In her heart, the land around her never stopped being Arendelle and she will protect what is hers. 

Elsa senses something change in the air, like a sudden brightening, and she is immediately on high alert.  A heartbeat later, an unnatural wind blasts open her windows and someone lands inside the room with a soft _crack_ like ice breaking under pressure.

Frost gathers at her fingertips.

*

He sees children, including the boy from that afternoon, scattered around the large vaulted room and it is all the confirmation he needs.  There is only one thing he needs to do right now and that is to take them back home, to restore their lights to the world.

He takes a step toward the closest child and before he has lifted his other foot, a thick wall of ice spears up between them.  Without thinking, or more accurately, thinking only of getting the children  _out,_ Jack waves his cane at the obstacle with a hard motion and it shatters.

“Stay away from them!” a voice snaps, hard and commanding.  It is the same voice he heard back in the forest.  A handful of icicles, each the width of a bowling ball and ending in a glittering point, spike out of the floor in a circle around him.  

The owner of said voice is a woman near the center of the room.  She is not physically tall, but she has a presence that makes her appear taller than she is.  Her white-blond hair is pulled back into a loose braid – the exact mirror image of the woman he saw in the vision earlier.  Instead of a smile, however, both her eyes and her mouth are grim.

“Don't move,” she warns, hands lifted in his direction.  The swirl of ice waiting to take shape is unmistakable.

Though Jack has suspected since he first encountered the oddly unfamiliar ice, actually seeing someone wielding power so similar to his own, he is still momentarily stunned.  He considers breaking out of the impromptu icicle cage, but something stays his hand.

“Who are you?  Why are you here?”

Her voice pitches higher, a note of fear creeping in. 

Jack hasn’t had much experience with kidnappers and she seems more … protective than his mental image of a serial kidnapper.  “I’m here to bring the kids home.  I don’t know why you took them, but kidnapping is never the answer—”

“ _What_?  You think I _kidnapped_ them?!”

“Wait, what?”  Blink.  There’s a confused silence on both ends.  “Didn’t you?”

“No!”  She sounds mortified at the thought.

“Then… why are they here?”

She hesitates, uncertainty written clearly in her features.  Jack realizes that the two of them are both still in a defensive stance, Jack with his staff held out and she with her hands. 

“Ok, hang on, wait.  Look.  Can we – can we talk?”  He drops his staff to his side, thinks about it, then bends to place it on the ground gingerly so as to avoid the icicles still leveled at him.  Holding up his now-empty hands, he waits, hoping that he hasn’t just made a huge mistake.  “My name is Jack Frost.  I’m a Guardian – kinda like a protector of children – and I just want to get these kids back home.  Could you maybe drop the icy death spikes?"

The alarmed suspicion in her eyes gradually recedes as he talks and she relaxes a fraction, lowering her hands.  The icicle cage disappear in a shower of snow, much like the snowflake had dissipated earlier in Gerd's room.  “My name is Elsa,” she says cautiously.  “I don’t – it’s not my intention to keep these children away from their homes, but they aren’t safe there right now.  There’s something out there that’s calling them away from the village and until I can find it, even if you take them back, they won’t stay there.”

Her eyes sweep around the room then come back to rest on him.  “You were in the forest today.  With Kai.”

 “Yeah.  And then you took him.”

“I didn’t think I had a choice.  The _Trolden_ was there too and I had no way of knowing who you were.  In fact, I still don’t really know who you are.”  Drawing herself straighter, she arches an eyebrow at him. 

Jack tries to process all of this new information and, if he were Sandy, he’d have about a hundred question marks dancing above his head right now.  Which is why it takes him almost a full minute to register that she’s waiting for a response.  “Not much else to tell,” he shrugs with a half-smile.  “Jack Frost, Guardian, trying to figure out what’s going on with the children.  So, what’s the _Trolden_?  And what did you mean when you said the children aren’t safe at home?”

“… that explanation may take some time.  You really are here for the children?”

“Cross my heart.”  As carefree as he typically is, Jack takes his role as a Guardian very seriously and he lets it show in his voice.  “I’ve got the time.”

It seems to satisfy Elsa because, after a brief searching look, she nods and waves one hand to conjure up two ice chairs.  “Have a seat, though I’m afraid it will be cold.  This is all I have.”

“No problem,” Jack grins, plopping down immediately.  He bends to scoop up his staff.  “I’m kinda partial to the cold anyway.  In the interest of full disclosure…”  He conjures a snow dove, a small one so as to not startle her, and sends it flapping toward her. 

“Oh!”  Elsa instinctively holds out a hand, which the dove perches onto.  It is her turn to look stunned and her voice when she speaks in almost a whisper: “Wow, I’ve never – I didn’t think there’d be anyone else who could do this.” 

“Disappointed that you’re not special?” he teases.

“No!”  The denial is instantaneous and vehement.  “No,” she repeats, more softly, her eyes growing distant.  “I never wanted to be special.”

And Jack has no idea what to say because he knows that feeling so painfully well, of just wanting to be normal and not understanding _why_ he has been chosen, singled out, to be special.  He’s still searching for words, any words, when Elsa moves to transfer the dove to the back of her chair and takes a seat with a sigh. 

“The _Trolden_ ,” she begins crisply, no sign at all of the hint of fragility in the moment that just passed, “is a malevolent being, creature, thing - whatever you wish to name it.  Some of the stories call it a demon or even the Devil…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Eg er seks år gamal” is Norwegian for "I am six years old". (But I'm sure you all figured that out by the context.)
> 
> As expected, I am rambling and projections for length has now been adjusted to four chapters. Thank you to everyone who read and also especially those who were kind enough to leave a kudos. 
> 
> The next chapter will open with Elsa' involvement with this disappearance business.


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